cockroaches
awild | March 25, 2010
Blatta orientalis
Oriental Cockroach
The key to this image is the soft lighting. A strobe fired into a white box produces an even white light, allowing us to see the subtler tones and textures on the surface of this common pest insect. You could almost sell this roach on ebay.
Photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 200, f10, 1/160 sec
bleimanb | December 3, 2007Humans are now one large step closer to producing armies of undead, zombie hordes who live only to feast on the brains of the living and reproduce by infecting non-zombies with their "zombie virus" through their saliva or other bodily fluids. This is thanks to the work of a team of scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, who have documented a kind of wasp that zombifies cockroaches.
Ampulex compressa enjoys licking pieces of wood, long walks on the beach and necromancy.
The Ampulex compressa actually stings a roach twice, once to disable it, and again (this time…
zooillogix | July 13, 2007Late last month the Genesis II Pathfinder spacecraft was delivered into orbit and along with it went a bold group of unwitting arthropods. Bigelow Aerospace was founded in 1999 with the vision of creating orbital hotels for "space tourists." In an equally lucrative move, this Space Camp for bugs was conceived by Robert Bigelow, the company's founder and namesake, while on vacation.
In the middle of last year, he called his payload team into a room and showed them five dirt-filled containers. Inside each one was an entire colony of ants that he had coaxed, prodded and pried from the ground…
zooillogix | April 24, 2007In an embarrassing revelation for termites everywhere, researchers from the Natural History Museum of London have determined that termites are actually a highly social form of cockroach. Although they appear more similar to ants, genetic testing confirmed the relationship and definitively determined that they were a family of cockroaches. As if this wasn't humiliating enough, entomologist Paul Eggelton suggested that the cockroach penchant for coprophagy, or eating their own feces, may have led to the evolution of termite physiology and society in the first place... not cool. Speculation…